


Reward

by Jocelyn



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim), Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Post-Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim), Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 18:26:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13195983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jocelyn/pseuds/Jocelyn
Summary: In Operation Pitfall, Chuck and Stacker do everything right, but still fail.  Mako and Raleigh do everything right, but still fail.  Yet despite everything that goes wrong, they succeed - but still have to face the aftermath.  Stacker finds himself with more time than he expected, and more choices than he ever imagined to help his suddenly-expanded family.





	1. Payload

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somethingsomething](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingsomething/gifts).



> I received three relationship prompts from [somethingsomething](http://bloglikejaeger.tumblr.com/post/101475048284/hey-santa-more-for-the-most-part-im) for the 2017 Secret Santa Challenge. So here is a three-chapter fic which (I hope) fulfills the details of the requests. Enjoy! (Obviously, this doesn't try to follow the spoilers/teasers we've had about Jake Pentecost.)

**Part I:  Payload**

 "The release is primed!" Chuck shouted over the shriek of alarms and tortured metal in Striker's conn-pod.  "Ready to deliver the payload, sir!  The hull is compromised...half the systems are offline!"

"We haven't got much time - Gipsy, find whatever cover you can!" Stacker ordered.

" _Striker, you're way too close to the blast zone!_ " Raleigh warned. 

"We know!"  Chuck squinted through Striker's instruments at Slattern and Scunner, bearing down on them.  "Geiszler and Gottlieb say - need a kaiju to go through?  'kay.  We'll arrange that."

" _Marshal!_ " Mako said, the implications sinking in for her.  To drop the payload only to drag two kaiju down behind it...Stacker and Chuck wouldn't be coming back from that.

"Sir?" To Stacker's surprise, there was doubt in Chuck's voice...no, not in his voice.  In the drift.  Imagine that.  Chuck Hansen had doubts, something he never let slip aloud or in his actions or in his attitude.  Inside, the boy was full of doubt.

_Not a boy,_ the kid retorted in Stacker's mind.   _But someone's gotta think it - what if this_ doesn't  _work?_

_Then...out of options?  No.  No, even if we go down, Gipsy's still here, we can... "_ Listen up, LOCCENT.  If this doesn't work, then we've cleared a path for the lady.  Raleigh, d'you hear?"

"... _sir?_ "

"Gipsy is nuclear!  If the Breach is still intact, grab one of the carcasses and take her in!  You hear me?!"

There was a long silence on the comm.  But then, " _we hear you, sir.  Heading for the carcass._    _We'll fall back out of the blast zone._ "

Striker didn't have the mobility to get out of the blast zone.  "My father always says - he says if you have a shot, you take it," said Chuck.  "So let's do this.  's been a pleasure, sir."

With Scunner and Slattern bearing down on them, Stacker grabbed the payload release.  "Set the timer!"

"Timer set, sir!  Thirty seconds on my mark!"  They shifted themselves sideways - release aimed toward the breach, their arms aimed for the two incoming kaiju.  

Behind Chuck's rigid concentration, Stacker could still hear it, like whispers just within earshot.   _Dad...Dad...Dad..._

"Release!"

"MARK!"  The payload jettisoned from Striker's back, straight out over the Breach.  The two men pivoted, lunging and staggering to dodge Slattern's bulk and snagged Scunner in their arms, slashing and plunging their sling blades deep into its hide.  They toppled head over heels with no purchase for their feet - down.

They were falling down into the Breach after the payload.   _Good...good...too close to the payload, but good..._

Over the screech of metal tearing under Scunner's teeth, Stacker heard Mako's voice, like a sting in his heart.  " _Sensei -_ "

The payload detonated.  Sensation and direction and time lost all meaning and they were flying.  Water sprayed - alarms screamed, metal ripped and bent - bones cracked - light glared...

* * *

 

Drift.  Drifting.  

Buzzing.

Water.

"Warning.  Conn-pod integrity compromised.  Recommend emergency jettison."

_What?_

Drift...Chuck?   _Chuck...Chuck...where are you?_

Nothing.  Alone.   _...no...no, can't be alone in the drift again...Chuck, Chuck...where..._

Herc...Herc had searched for Chuck in the drift before. There’d been close shaves, more than a few after five years and ten kills.  The Hansens had never spoken of it to Stacker, but Herc remembered so Chuck remembered so now Stacker remembered... _Chuck, where are you?_

Nothing...wait... _something..._

A dim buzzing...distant...not dreams...not fully absent...Stacker could never have tolerated the neural load alone, again, and  _something_ was still here within him....he blinked through blood and sweat toward the limp figure to his left...Chuck was there...unconscious, but alive.

"Conn-pod integrity compromised.  Total structural failure in sixty-nine seconds.  Recommend emergency jettison."

Still alive.  The payload had blown but Striker's pilots were still alive, both of them.  Stacker pawed at the HUD, but it showed nothing.  No instruments.  No visuals on its shattered screen.  No projection from its shorted lights.  Darkness.  Blinded.  No voices from its comm.  No orientation.  They were floating---probably sinking.

Stacker tested his arms and legs.  Painful, but mobile.  

The escape pods would have separate comms.  He could get into contact with LOCCENT from inside one.  

Chuck was unconscious.

"Total structural failure in forty-eight seconds."

Nothing else to do.  Stacker pawed at the emergency release for the left rig.  It creaked and jerked - his heart jerked with it - but then it rose, gliding Chuck gently into the pod, and the seal lights blinked green.

Then Chuck was gone, and Stacker was completely alone.  

"Total failure in twenty-two seconds."

_So heavy..._ he almost surrendered to unconsciousness.  But Chuck was alone.  Nothing else to do.  No options left.  So he fumbled for his own emergency release.  It beeped confirmation as his world tilted up and out of the conn-pod...but blackness took him before he knew whether it launched.

* * *

_Sir...Dad?  Where...what...why..._

"Stay with me, Chuck.  You're all right.  That's a nasty concussion, and a drift break on top of it.  Marshal's okay, he's coming 'round."

Chuck would've started struggling to get free, but his right arm and leg weren't working - and they hurt...or they would hurt if they weren't so heavy and half-numb.  Meds.  He'd been fighting long enough to recognize the faint smells and sensations of the infirmary, the shadow of pain dulled by drugs but just waiting to rush in like water behind a fragile dam.

And....and there it was, the ghost drift.  His partner, asleep or unconscious, his own senses dulled and muffled, but just,  _just_ there...just enough for Chuck to cling to.

Only... _not_ Dad.  Not just Dad.

Wait...Chuck squinted through puffy eyes, and there was Dad, awake and alert at his bedside.  There was Dad's ghost drift, established through five years and countless drifts, too powerful to be washed away even by... _SirMarshalPentecostStackerSenseiStacksSir..._

That last drift hadn't been with Dad.  It'd been with Marshal.

" _You're easy.  You're an egotistical jerk with daddy issues...we'll drift just fine."_

_Yeah, well...guess you weren't wrong._ "What...happen...?”

"It's over," said Dad, his voice and his drift presence very soft, so careful, afraid of hurting Chuck.  

Hercules Hansen had a kind side that everyone who worked with him knew and admired.  He'd consoled many a wounded Ranger, many a bereaved relative, many a shaken or distraught crew officer.  Hercules fucking Hansen, man of the people, the human side of the PPDC's leadership, expressing all the understanding and concern that stern Marshal Pentecost didn't have time to show.

He’d expressed so much for everything and everyone except his son.  Here in the hospital was the only place Dad was ever gentle or soft with his son.  Not that his son would let himself admit that Herc was capable of comforting him anywhere else.

"What..."

"Stacker's here.  Right here.  He's gonna be all right; you both just got knocked about.  He's the one who managed to jettison you before the conn-pod imploded, but it took a lot of out of him. Medics've got him on some of the strong stuff."   Herc guided Chuck's left hand to another bed only inches away -  _there._ Skin-on-skin contact with someone other than his dad, but the ghost drift shimmered a little brighter, and Chuck's heart slowed down.  He'd never imagined anyone else's touch easing his mind like his dad's, but now there was someone else.  Marshal. Stacker.  Sir.  Partner.  Co-pilot.

_How's that work?_

"Feels a bit odd," Herc agreed, not releasing Chuck's hand.  Chuck squinted at his father's hazy form. "I can feel him. Through you."

Hm.  Chuck had never figured it could work that way.  "Breach?"   _Closed?_

"Yeah.  It's over, son."  Herc never addressed Chuck as "son."  "War clock's stopped."

There was something Herc wasn't saying...Chuck stiffened and felt his father's hand tighten on his.  

The ghost drift was too powerful not to sense it, even with Stacker Pentecost now Chuck's most recent partner.  There was no wiping out five years of drift with Chuck's dad, so Chuck realized...the payload  _hadn't worked._

_Oh God...fuck...shit...no, no, I failed, the mission failed..._

"Chuck, listen to me.  You didn't fail.  You cleared a path for Gipsy.  The payload detonation didn't take out the Breach, it's true, but it took out Scunner and damn near crippled Slattern.  It threw Striker back out, but Gipsy was there, and you'd cleared her a path.  They did just like you planned if the detonation didn't take; they took Gipsy into the Breach.  They went in with Slattern, and the fucker finally opened."

_Should've been me...I failed and now they're dead..._

"Nono, they're here.  They're not dead."  Chuck blinked through the drugged haze and squirmed against his father's restraining hands.  He needed to see.  "Okay, okay," Herc sighed.  Chuck always needed to see.  He never took anybody's word for anything.  "Relax, lemme help you sit up."

The world was wobbly and seemed to be tilting a lot, but by leaning on his dad, Chuck managed to stay upright enough to see the other two beds in the infirmary.  One occupant lay prone and motionless.  The other was half-upright, looking as groggy and anxious as Chuck felt.  The blue tips of her hair blurred, blending with her face as if she were a cartoon character with tears.  "Mako?"

She focused in his vision a little as she looked up at him.  "Chuck?"

Next to her, the bigger, paler figure didn't move.  Raleigh Becket.   _Has-been, I called him...is he dead because I fucked up the bomb run?_

"He's not dead," Herc murmured.  "Running solo didn't do him any more favors than it did Stacker."

"Solo?" Chuck looked from his unconscious partner to the unconscious Becket, his mind too sluggish to process it.

Mori looked as stricken and guilty as Chuck felt.  "I couldn't...he had to finish alone..."

_Aw, fuck..._

"You know it wasn't like that," Herc scolded her.  "You did nothing wrong; your oxygen line failing wasn't your fault."

Shit.  Mori's oxygen had blown?  How was she still alive?  She shook her head absently.  "But he was alone.  He wasn't supposed to be left alone again.  It wasn't safe."

"You didn't fail," Herc insisted.  He looked from her to Chuck.  "Neither of you did.  You did everything right, and you got the job done.  It took all four of you.  That's why we've got co-pilots and partners and every bloody redundancy we can manage.  Neither of you did anything wrong."

"Raleigh..."

"C'mon, Mako, lie down.  He's in stable condition.  You both just need to rest," Tendo coaxed.  With his and the doctor's urging, she finally tucked herself against Becket's side and closed her eyes.  Tendo looked back at Chuck.  "He woke up for a little while but collapsed after we picked them up.  Between the oxygen deprivation, having to jettison Mako, and then jettisoning himself above a nuclear blast, he took a beating too."

"He'll be okay, though?" Chuck murmured.   _And Marshal?  He'll be okay?_

Herc chorused with Tendo. "Yeah.  They'll both be okay."

_Except...he has leukemia.  He thought piloting again would kill him.  How long can he live now...God, no, how long until..._

Herc actually put an arm around Chuck.   _Dunno, kid.  I don't know.  But you won't be alone._

**_To Be Continued..._ **


	2. Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mako and Raleigh awaken in the Shatterdome after Operation Pitfall, and ponder the war they've fought and the losses they've each suffered, and ponder what it all means for the future.

**Part II:  Sword**

Raleigh drifted back into the world to find a weight on his chest that was vaguely familiar.  At first, he thought it was Yancy.  His brother used to do that after a rough fight, pillowing his head on Raleigh or up against Raleigh's side, one arm draped protectively over him, his nose in Raleigh's hair.  It felt safe. 

It'd been so long...then Raleigh remembered.   _Not Yancy._ Never again Yancy.  That absence ached and throbbed so much, still, after five years, four months...except now… 

... _Mako!_ Raleigh forced his eyes open.  Black hair, a streak of blue right in front of his nose.  There was an arm draped across Raleigh's chest, smaller than Yancy had ever been, but holding on just as tight, a dark head pillowed on his shoulder.   

Raleigh raised his clumsy left arm to touch her hair, just to reassure himself that she was real.  She murmured and twitched in her sleep, and a corresponding twinge of anxiety rippled through the ghost drift.  "Shhh," he whispered.  "'s okay, Mako.  I'm here." 

"Mm," she tightened her grip.   

_"You're squeezing me too tight.  I couldn’t breathe._ "  Laughing, crying, relief...then confusion and panic as the world had gone dark in the rescue chopper and the last thing he remembered was Mako slapping his face and crying his name.

"Hey, Rals."  Tendo was at their bedside.  "How you feeling?" 

"Not sure," he admitted.   _Tired...dizzy...can't...think right...meds?_ "What happened?" 

"You went into shock in the chopper," said Tendo.  "Medics've got you stable now; you'll be okay.  Scared Mako, though."

"Shit." Raleigh ran his fingers through her hair.  He could feel, but his hand was sluggish. He saw Tendo watching him closely and took a deep breath.  "What's the damage?"

Tendo sighed, but didn't try to dodge the subject.  "Even without fighting, being alone in a conn-pod again didn't do you any favors.  The dexterity in your left arm...probably won't ever come back completely.  I know it was the right arm that Gipsy lost this time, but the nerve connections in your brain were already damaged from 2020.  This just added to it."

Raleigh sighed too, but shrugged as well as he could without jostling Mako.  "Well.  If I can think and walk and feed myself, the rest is gravy.  I'll manage."  She started awake, flickering back to consciousness in the drift a second before she opened her eyes and looked at him.  "Hey."

Mako didn't say anything, just put her hand to his face.  "He's okay," Tendo said preemptively. "He's gonna be okay."

Now Mako  _couldn't_ say anything.  She just pressed her forehead to his, and he wrapped himself around her again.  Like in the escape pod, just horizontal. He smiled to himself, and to his relief, she laughed softly.  Easier.  Better, so much better.  Safe.   _It's over. We did it.  We won._

Mako pulled back a little to look at her face, propping herself on her elbows to stroke his cheeks with both hands, as if she wanted to memorize every bone of his face.  He let her and rubbed his cheek against her fingers.  Eyes closed...her calloused fingertips stroked across his eyelids, but it came with a surge of distress.

Raleigh flinched and Mako crooned, crawling fully into his bed, tangling their limbs.  He wasn't sure what'd caused that..."Doesn't matter," she whispered.  

Who was he kidding?  Every panic attack he'd had in the past five years, four months had the same cause, and they both knew it now after drifting.  Raleigh shuddered, vaguely aware of Tendo getting up and shooing the medics away when they would've come closer.

Mako's fingers stayed on his face, and she didn't falter even when tears started falling.  He tried to keep quiet so nobody'd hear.  He didn't want Pentecost or Chuck or Herc to wake up and see him like this.  

Why was it hitting him now?  They'd finished it, for Chrissakes.  The war was over.  Why couldn't he just celebrate and let Mako be happy?

She squeezed his elbow to make him look at her, narrowing her eyes at him.   _Stop that.  There were many things in the drift I was unprepared for, but I knew about Yancy.  I would have to feel him just as you would have to feel the day I lost my family.  It would be wrong for either of us to try to forget._

He tugged her against him and she tucked her head against his neck.  They'd both known loneliness so crushing and deep that it was like a black hole, ready to drag them into oblivion...but they could pull each other back now, and brace themselves in turn.  Mako was unconsciously in almost the same position that Yancy had occupied after combat, soothing her partner with her weight and herself with the sense of his skin and his presence in the drift.  Whatever wounds they'd suffered, they'd be okay.

Yancy'd been the anxious one before, the one more prone to nightmares and sudden surges of remembered terror.  Some of the crew medics had thought it was because he'd taken the job more seriously.  Well...maybe they hadn't been entirely wrong.  Raleigh cringed mentally.  At least he'd been conscientious enough to pay attention to his brother when those stresses had hit, so he could try to ease Yance through it.

_He knew what the stakes were.  He knew what we had to lose.  He warned me not to get cocky._

_You weren't wrong to have faith in him,_ Mako countered.   _You loved him and trusted him, and he was glad of that.  He didn't want you to be afraid. You couldn't spare him from everything._

Yeah, Raleigh knew that.  Yance had always been more serious, more cautious - and more prone to stress, long before the first kaiju had swum out of the Breach.  That wasn't anybody's fault - or even if it had been, it wasn't Raleigh's fault.  

_I hate so much that he died so scared._ Raleigh hid his face in Mako's hair as another silent sob shook him.  He'd cried for Yancy plenty of times over the past five years, four months - but this was the first time he hadn't been alone.

Mako didn't try to push that away, because there was no avoiding it or mitigating it.  Her parents had died searching for her and hadn't fled the collapsing buildings on the street in Tokyo, imagining their daughter among the rubble, not realizing she'd run in the confusion.  One of her father's cousins had told her that.  He hadn't - probably - meant to blame her, but he'd been a blunt man, not at all interested in taking Mako into his own household.  She'd blamed herself anyway for a long time.

Sensei was the one who'd retrieved Masao Mori's own sword and enforced the will that bequeathed it to his firstborn - not specifying gender of said firstborn - and kept it for Mako.  By the time she came of age and inherited the heirloom, she'd understood that an eleven-year-old in a panic-stricken crowd wasn't to blame for the fate of her parents, but nothing Sensei said had ever shaken Mako from her determination to avenge the monsters who'd stolen her parents and her childhood.

As Raleigh had touched his brother's picture, Mako had touched her father's sword the day of her first drift, whispering for her father and mother's blessing.

She'd half-wondered afterward if the disaster of their first drift meant that they were denying her.   _Things go wrong.  It's no one's fault._ Now she understood that.  So did Raleigh.

They let their thoughts mingle, their grief and their tears mingle, and if neither would ever completely heal the scars that losses had left behind, at least there were two of them now to carry both burdens, where they'd both felt alone before.  Mako would never forget the sensation of a terrified brother torn from the conn-pod, of the moment of death and the crush of the neural load, the agony of understanding what it all meant, that there was a hole in the soul that would never be filled again.

Raleigh had lived that flight through smoke and ash, rubble and flames, deafened by the roars, hunted as a child by a thing so unearthly it defied the child's sense of reality.  Even the glowing man who emerged from Coyote Tango like a savior sent by heaven hadn't ever completely understood all that Mako had seen and felt, though she'd told Sensei about it and he always listened with full attention.

Mako's sword had delivered vengeance and the end of the Breach and the monsters who built it.  There was no sealing off the memories - and neither she nor Raleigh would want that.  The drift carried them together through each other's nightmares, and neither of them would be alone again.  

_**To Be Continued...** _


	3. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Herc never imagined he might get both his son and his best friend back after Operation Pitfall. But now he and Stacker have decisions to make, and support to give for their children and co-pilots, to make the most of the time Stacker has left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jake's relationship with his father and adoptive sister are inventions, not really based on any of the teasers for Uprising.

**Part III: Family**

Herc felt Chuck's terror in the ghost drift when the medics talked to Stacker about his condition.  Stacker had the sense not to try to shut Chuck out of the meeting; they'd drifted too recently.  The kid would know anyway.  So he'd allowed Chuck to stay at his side, while Herc paced in the infirmary and Raleigh and Mako sat in their beds, watching him with full eyes.

_"I'll be candid with you, Marshal.  It's nothing short of a miracle that you lived through that.  I'm afraid...though your partner and Striker's systems prevented you from suffering fatal brain damage, your immune system is suffering still more, and the leukemic cells have invaded your bone marrow and liver."_

Herc had to lean on the nearest bed to stay upright against the blast of agony and denial from his son.  Stacker was unsurprised, but his young co-pilot's grief and fear buffeted him, and he was left at a loss of how to ease the blow.

Strange how Herc could feel Stacker almost as keenly as Chuck did, just by virtue of the drift bond with his boy.  

Chuck burst out,  " _There's gotta be some kind of treatment, right?  You're not just gonna do nothing!_ "

" _Er...preventing infection will be key, but..."_ The doctor leaned away from Chuck, probably expecting an explosion that Chuck Hansen had been so famous for.  He couldn't realize how close Chuck was to simply collapsing.  

Stacker took charge.  " _Thank you, doctor.  If you'll give us a little while to talk, please."_

The doctor left in a hurry.  Herc hesitated, wanting nothing more than to go to his son, but...his son was Stacker's co-pilot now, and Stacker was a man who fiercely guarded his privacy.  Even a friend as close as Herc wasn't entitled to invade that - 

\- but Stacker was aware of Herc's presence in the ghost drift.  Over the maelstrom of Chuck's distress, he beckoned.  So Herc went into the doctor's office and closed the door behind him.  

Herc's kid was bent over his knees, face in his hands.  Stacker's hand was on his back.  Herc's throat tightened, both with his son's grief, and his friend's, but also his own, all too aware of the reality.  "How long?"

"A year at most," Stacker said softly.  Herc had never really recognized Stacker's capacity for tenderness until he'd seen the echo in Chuck’s drift memories.  It made him envious, to see Stacker's capabilities as a father. Stacker shot Herc a stern look past Chuck.  "It's not too late to rise to the occasion, Herc.  In fact, I'm bloody well  _expecting_  you to do precisely that in every way."

Good old Stacks.  Never one to mince words.  So Herc cautiously put a hand on his son's head.  He half-expected Chuck to jerk angrily away.  

Chuck didn't.  

"Yes, sir," Herc said, making a quiet half-joke of it.  "You want me to handle the sunset of the program?"

"Transition, not sunset," Stacker corrected.  "Geiszler and Gottlieb are optimistic that we've won a major battle, but given what Raleigh saw on the other side, we don't dare take for granted that this was the final shot in the war.  Most people will want to believe that, but someone has to make sure none of the data is lost or scattered, in case, God forbid, we or our descendants need it again some day."  He gave Herc a faint smile.  " _One_ of my last acts as senior officer of the Jaeger Program - "Chuck flinched, and both men moved their hands to his shoulders," - will be a field promotion of Hercules Hansen to Marshal, while I've still got the authority to choose a successor."

Chuck drew a shaky breath.  "What the hell am I supposed to do now?"  It was bitter.  Some enemies couldn't be fought with giant metal fists, and the kid knew that objectively, but...this was the first time he'd  _really_ had to face it.

"Take part in the transition," said Stacker.  "We're down to three experienced people who  _might_ be capable of piloting a Jaeger again."  

Chuck looked up in confusion, and Herc was the one who explained it:  "Raleigh's lost some movement in his left arm, and there's other brain damage from piloting solo that may affect him cognitively.  Medical's grounded him permanently."

"Fuck."  Raleigh had seemed fine; it hadn't occurred to Chuck that the medics were keeping him in the infirmary for a reason.  He stared bleakly at Stacker, at a loss.  Stacker moved his hand to Chuck's.

"You'll make it.  You have a lifetime ahead of you now.  You won't be alone."  The kid flinched, but squeezed Stacker's hand back.  Then, when Herc least expected it, he reached back with his free hand and covered Herc's, where it still rested on his shoulder.  Stacker smiled faintly at Herc, who couldn't keep the surprise off his face and definitely couldn't have hidden it from the drift. "I need to send for my son.  Jake has been in school, but I'll take him on leave now for...a few months."  He looked at Chuck.  "I want him to meet you."

Chuck wasn't terribly enthusiastic about the idea, but he didn't refuse Stacker.

* * *

Mako was glad to have Raleigh at her side when Sensei told her the doctor's prognosis.  "A year, if I'm fortunate. I'm promoting Herc to Marshal and head of the Jaeger Program, to replace myself.  And I'm sending for Jake."

Raleigh only showed a little surprise to sense from the ghost drift who Jake was.  "Will you go back to London?" Mako asked, her voice almost steady.

Sensei hesitated, then shook his head.  "No.  I considered it, but it matters more to...end my days here, with my family."

She couldn't hold back a sob then.  Raleigh's big, warm hand was on her back, and she felt Sensei's fingertips on her chin, brushing the tears that escaped her eyes.  "I - " she had to whisper around her closed throat. "I thought - to lose you  _now_ \- after you came back from Pitfall..."

_Please...no, please...I can't bear it...don't make me face this again..._

"You'll never lose me, Mako. I'll always be here for you," said Sensei, moving his hand to the top of her head like a benediction.  "You can always find me in the drift."  Through the ghost drift, she sensed him meeting Raleigh's eyes in a silent question, and Raleigh's small, firm nod, a silent, devout promise.

_You won't be alone._

Sensei held out a hand and briefly clasped Raleigh's, sealing that promise, before he went on.  "Chuck isn't taking this news well.  I hope you'll both be there for him as well."  He looked at Raleigh again.  "He knows now from drifting with me, what it means to lose a partner even outside of a Jaeger, but that won't make going through it any easier."

Mako stepped toward him, and to her surprise, he released Raleigh and put his arms around her, pulling her against him.  They rarely hugged outright anymore.  "It's not fair," she muttered into his chest like a child.  "After everything we've already lost, now this."

"I know."  He petted her head.  "If I could spare all of you having to grieve one more time, you know I would."  With a sigh, he rested his chin on top of her head.  "Even so, we've been given more time now than I thought we'd have.  Let's not waste too much of it on wishing."

But he didn't let go of Mako until she was ready.  Mako had always been curious about how Sensei always seemed to know when she was ready.  He'd never said it, and neither had she, neither had Tamsin, but Mako had always wondered whether she and Sensei might be drift compatible.

* * *

Mako and her Sensei's biological son weren't drift compatible, though at times they'd both wanted to be.  The one time she had truly defied Sensei was when Jake had visited the Academy last spring and demanded to drift test with Mako.  " _I'm as old as Chuck Hansen now!_ " he'd insisted 

Sensei had refused, furious, threatening to send Jake back to his boarding school and cut their holiday short.  Normally, Mako deferred to Sensei - to the point that she squabbled with Jake over the years because he complained that she always took his father's side when they quarreled.

Jake and Sensei had quarreled a great deal, if never to the degree of the Hansens. Tamsin always smirked when she witnessed it, and told Mako, " _Stacker's son is_ exactly  _like he was as a lad.  Your aunt Luna is laughing her arse off on the other side right now."_

On the issue of the drift, for one time, Mako had outright questioned Sensei.  " _To consent to the test is also my decision, sir, and the test alone doesn't require parental approval if the tester is sixteen."_

In other words, if her father did not give her his blessing to test with her adoptive brother, she would proceed without it.   _All we want is the answer to the question,_ she'd thought unhappily.  

She'd been nervous as Sensei stared at her in shock, imagining his rage leading to his removal of her from the Mark-3 Project - or wounding their relationship.  Even Jake had held his breath.

Sensei had relented.   _"Very well."_

The pons techs had sensed the tension, but said nothing as they prepared Mako and Jake for the test drift, while Sensei had looked on silently.

All that tension had been for nothing:  Mako and Jake were not even close to the threshold of compatibility.

Sensei had calmed down from whatever fury his children's challenge had raised in him by the time the pons techs finished explaining the results, and informed them, " _Your performances against each other in the Kwoon and other tests indicated you weren't compatible._ "

In other words,  _I told you so._ Even Sensei could get a little passive aggressive at times.  But he hadn't said what Mako had known:  she and Jake had been rivals since the day they met, sometimes subtly, sometimes openly, but there was a tension between them that had always existed and probably always would.  

Jake hadn't understood Sensei's choice to adopt Mako, and truth be told, neither had she for a very long time.  He'd wondered what he lacked to make Sensei choose to bring a strange outsider into his family, while Mako had wondered how long it would take for Sensei to desert her in favor of his true son.

Both of Stacker Pentecost's children had harbored some rather stupid ideas.

Though no one in the Shatterdome spoke to the media about Stacker Pentecost's condition, media muckrakers had known about it before Operation Pitfall, and speculation about his prognosis after the destruction of Striker Eureka was everywhere.  So Jake knew about it before he arrived in Hong Kong.

It had only been a few weeks, but Sensei was losing weight, and no longer stood quite so straight as he'd done only a few months before.  Jake knew.  Mako could see it in his eyes the moment he sized his father up.

Raleigh left Mako for that talk.  Even Sensei told him, "You don't have to go," but Raleigh smiled gently and shook his head.

"I think I do.  You know where to find me," he told her, touching her hand before letting himself out of the room.

Even Herc left.  Then it was Mako, Sensei, Jake, and Chuck Hansen.  

"This is Chuck," Sensei told Jake. "My co-pilot."

Jake looked dazed.  Of course, he knew who Chuck Hansen was - the entire world did.  But the boy standing a few paces away from the Pentecost family only barely resembled the smug, hyper-confident Ranger who swaggered across television screens and sneered at questions from reporters before Operation Pitfall.  He stared at Jake with wide eyes, mute and unmistakably nervous.  

Mako wondered in a rush of anguish how much Chuck could feel of Sensei's failing health.

The conversation was painfully awkward, with one-word answers from Chuck and Jake and no words at all from Mako, until Jake's composure cracked and he shuddered, eyes going wet, as Sensei talked of "arrangements" over the next few months.  Chuck backed off at one look from Sensei, and Mako followed without needing to be asked.

But she did look back from the doorway in time to see Sensei pulling his son into his arms.

Like they'd choreographed it, Raleigh and Herc came down the hall from opposite directions, not looking at each other, only at their partners.  Mako peeled away from Chuck to grab Raleigh's hand like her life depended on it, but again, she looked back.  Chuck was clutching Herc's elbow, something she'd never seen him do before, but he was looking over his shoulder at her.

* * *

Later, after Sensei'd had some time alone with his son, the other pilots found themselves sought out by Jake.  His complete lack of tact had always driven Mako and Sensei mad, but Tamsin had just grinned and calmed him his father's son.

Jake zeroed in on Chuck as Herc, Mako, and Raleigh watched and asked, "Does he hurt?"

Chuck did a full-body flinch.  Herc and Mako glared, but Jake didn't break eye contact with Chuck.  After a long silence, Chuck found his voice and answered with a glimmer of his own old bluntness.  "Yes."

That made Mako flinch, but Raleigh put his hands on her shoulders, and she sensed him give Herc a warning look.   _Don't interfere. They need this._

"How the hell were  _you_ drift compatible?"  Well, that certainly conveyed Jake's opinion of Chuck Hansen's worthiness to drift with Sensei.

But this time, Chuck didn't flinch, and for a second, Mako felt a little dizzy - because there was some incredible cognitive dissonance in seeing this stocky white Australian boy who barely looked his twenty-one years suddenly bearing such startling resemblance to Mako's adoptive father.  And when Chuck answered, Mako was quite certain Sensei himself was answering the question too:  "Because he chose to."

That deflated some of Jake's bravado, and Herc waded in.  "Now we see you, it's maybe not as mad an idea as everyone first thought, son."

Jake dropped the metaphorical rope and mumbled what was really on his mind. "I don't want him to die."

Chuck too looked away, but Herc put a hand on his son's shoulder and spoke to Jake in a gentle voice. "Believe me, neither do we."

* * *

Herc was never shy about telling others they could blame him for Chuck's obnoxiousness.  Nor were the media shy about blaming him.  

So it caused quite the uproar when Stacker Pentecost elected Herc Hansen as the guardian of his teenaged son.  " _I can't believe Hercules Hansen would humiliate Chuck like this no matter how estranged they might be!"_  some touchy-feely reporter wailed on a debate show.

Chuck recovered some of his old bravado and snorted disdainfully as the crews changed the channel.  "I almost wish I'd let him talk me into being guardian, just to watch them all shit themselves."

"And  _that_ is why I said yes," Herc muttered.  Mako actually giggled.

Herc knew from Stacker's memories via Chuck that sometimes Stacker and his son went through long periods of not speaking. It wasn't due to quarreling as much as that neither of them were talkative.  So when he started seeing Chuck and Jake fiddling with the recovered fragments of Striker Eureka in total silence, Herc wasn't concerned.  On the contrary:  he was relieved.

Both of Stacker's children as well as his co-pilot had meltdowns at various points over the sheer cruelty and unfairness of the universe.  Stacker patiently endured them, (Herc a little less patiently), while Raleigh was an anchor who kept Mako from flying out of control with grief and rage as she watched another loved one die.

Stacker confessed to Herc, "I nearly did what Tamsin did and left.  She didn't want us to watch her die - but we still had a war to fight.  They want me here for as long as they can have me, and I won't deny them."

"You've got a right to do what you want now, you know," Herc dared to say, though Chuck would be furious at him for it.

Stacker knew that, and smiled.  "Yes.  And what I want is to give them peace.  That gives me peace."  He looked at Raleigh and confessed, “This isn't quite what I had planned a year ago.  But I couldn't be happier."

A little while later, Herc and Stacker went to Herc’s new office for a teleconference, and Jake asked Chuck (not knowing both Herc and Stacker could eavesdrop on the conversation), " _What'd he mean, about what he said to Becket?_ "

Chuck gave Raleigh a very tired smile, but Raleigh was the one who answered.  " _When he found me in Alaska, he asked where I'd rather die - there on the Wall, or in a Jaeger._ "

Jake was puzzled, but Chuck nodded confirmation.  Mako kept one hand tightly in Raleigh’s, but reached out to give Jake's a pat.  " _He meant he never imagined then that there was a third option_."

_The world_ not  _coming to an end.  Seeing the war end.  Seeing his children live.  Knowing someone he trusts will raise his son and keep his and Tamsin's memories alive - literally._

Raleigh and Mako looked at each other.  Her eyes were red and wet, but she smiled.  Watching through the ghost drift, Herc grinned at Stacker, and saw, for the first time in a long time, a broad, unrestrained smile.  _If anyone could bring this about, you could, old friend.  I’m just glad to see you get your reward._

 

**The End.**


End file.
